As digital display technology evolves, display resolutions continue to increase. For example, the high definition (HD) digital video streams that recently embodied the best commercial display resolution available, are poised to be eclipsed by ultra high definition (UHD) displays (e.g., 4K displays, 8K displays, and so on).
Video coding systems are often used to compress digital video signals, for instance, to reduce storage space consumed and/or to reduce transmission bandwidth consumption associated with such signals. Scalable video coding (SVC) has been shown to improve the quality of experience for video applications running on devices with different capabilities, over heterogeneous networks. Scalable video coding may consume fewer resources (e.g., communications network bandwidth, storage, etc.), when compared to non-scalable video coding techniques.
Known SVC video coding implementations (e.g., that employ spatial scalability) have proven to be effective for the coding of HD video signals, but exhibit shortcomings when processing digital video signals that extend beyond HD resolution, for example UHD video signals.